Crooked Man: A Hard-Boiled but Humorous New Orleans Mystery (Tubby Dubonnet Series #1) (The Tubby Dubonnet Series) (7 page)

“I’ll show you Deposition Exhibit Four. This is Branscomb’s letter to you dated August second. I’ll ask you to look at it.”

“Okay,” said Tubby’s client.

“Do you remember it?”

“Sort of. It looks like a million other letters.”

“Did you have any discussions between Exhibit Three and Exhibit Four—with Branscomb, that is? Think hard and tell me.”

“What are you saying?” the witness asked.

“Wait,” Tubby cut in. “Objection that the question is too confusing to follow and is not even a question.”

“I don’t know what he means,” Adrian’s father said to the court reporter, like perhaps she could explain it. She faithfully took down every word, smiling at him sympathetically while she did so.

“Maybe you could put all those letters in a row on the table,” Tubby suggested, “and we could all understand better what you are asking about.”

“I’m trying to be precise,” Thomas said in exasperation, “and I’ll ask that you resist the temptation to interrupt at every question.”

“I’m not interrupting,” Tubby protested hotly. “I’m objecting, and it’s not a temptation, it’s my responsibility as this man’s lawyer.”

Before Tubby could get on a roll with his speech, the telephone in the conference room rang, and the court reporter was distracted. Tubby took a deep breath and went to the credenza to pick it up. It was his answering service, and a woman told him that his daughter was on the line.

“Put her through,” he said.

“Hello, Daddy? This is Debbie.” He remembered that it was Debbie’s first prom—not at her own school but at her date’s. Tubby had asked Mattie to be sure to get a picture of her in her gown—parenting by proxy.

“Hi, Debbie. What’s wrong?”

“Can you come get me?”

“Why—where are you?”

“I’m at the Marriott. I’m stranded. Josh got drunk and drove off, and I don’t know anybody here, and I’m very upset.”

“Sure, honey. Can you take a cab?”

“I don’t have any money with me. I called home already but nobody answered.”

“Are you in the lobby?”

“Yes,” she snuffled.

“Go out by the front door, where the doorman in the red coat is standing. I’ll pick up the car and be around in about ten minutes.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

Tubby hung up and got his coat.

“Sorry. Illness in the family. We’re going to have to reconvene at a later date.”

“What? You can’t do that,” the opposition insisted.

“Let’s go,” Tubby said to his client, who also got up and grabbed his smokes.

“My apologies, counselor, family emergency,” Tubby said.

“What is this? Is somebody in the hospital? What’s going on?” Thomas sputtered.

“Can you show him the way out, please?” Tubby asked the court reporter. “And please turn off the lights.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Goodnight, everybody,” Tubby said as he went out the door with his client in tow.

In the elevator Adrian’s father said, “That was a neat trick, Tubby. He was getting me all mixed up. You want to go catch a couple of drinks?”

“No, really, Sid. I have to go pick up my daughter. She got marooned at the prom.”

“Hey, whatever works.”

That’s how you got a reputation as a smart lawyer.

Quacking and beating the air frantically with their wings, the ducks scattered away from a huge Labrador retriever who splashed happily into the lagoon. The birds settled into the water a few yards away and then led the snorting beast, his head sticking out of the pea green water, in circles around and around the pond.

“Anyhow, call me if you need me,” Tubby told Collette.

That Sunday night Monique followed Darryl across the Mississippi on the Huey P. Long Bridge. Monique, behind the wheel of the Mazda, had never been this way before, and she was thrilled to be so high up, like riding a Ferris wheel. The chemical plants and shipyards far below lit up the river like the midway of a carnival she had been to as a child. After they got across and were pointed southwest on Highway 90, Darryl instructed her, on the car phone, to slow down and let him get about a mile ahead. He asked if she was doing all right, and she said yes. She really did feel good. It was an adventure. Darryl had tossed a blue gym bag in the backseat. That was what she was supposed to bring him later.

Darryl had installed a fantastic Sony compact disc player in the car, and she listened to Garth Brooks and Willie Nelson. She smoked cigarettes and tapped the wheel with her nails. The Rex and Endymion beads hanging on the rearview mirror danced back and forth. Darryl checked in every five minutes or so when he saw something interesting. He pointed out a restaurant he said the Mafia owned, and when they drove through a swamp he told her to look out for alligators, you might see the car lights reflected in their eyes. He also asked if she saw anybody following them. She hadn’t really been paying any attention, but she told him no. After that she started checking her mirror, but she didn’t know how you could tell one pair of headlights from another.

They drove through the town of Houma, on the bypass, and then turned left onto a narrow blacktop running in a direct line south, to the sea. It was dark, but Monique could tell that the land they were passing through was perfectly flat. Darryl told her it was nothing but rice fields and marshes. The flashing lights in the far distance could be oil rigs out on the Gulf, he said, or maybe power lines or boats. Finally he said he was pulling over, and in a minute she saw his lights off to the side. He was idling behind a trash Dumpster in what looked to be the middle of nowhere. She crushed onto the gravel and pulled in beside him.

Darryl got out of the truck and came around, and she rolled down her window.

“I’m going down about five miles,” he said. “You come to a place where this road makes a T almost. The main road hooks off to the right, and there’s another road that goes left. It’s gravel. It goes to some fishing camps, maybe two miles down the road. When I call you, just drive down there and meet me. Remember, straight to the fork. Turn off left. Come to me, two miles. When you leave, just go out the way you came in. You’re just bringing me the bag. Don’t hang around. Don’t get out of the car. Nobody needs to see you. I’ll call in about an hour. You got it? Can you wait that long?”

Monique nodded. “I live for you,” she said.

Darryl’s eyebrows seemed to pinch together, and his eyes twitched a little bit. “You’re the one, Monique,” he said, and kissed her. “Just do like I told you.”

He winked at her and got back in the truck. She cut off her lights and engine. Darryl rolled off, and in a couple of minutes the sound of his motor disappeared. Monique was all alone on a slender bridge of asphalt in the center of a million miles of marsh grass, salt air, and the biggest, blackest sky she could ever remember seeing. There were some stars, but no moon. It was so quiet she became conscious of the sound of her own breathing. Then some night insects, or frogs, began croaking at one another, and a mosquito hummed into the car. Something rustled around in the Dumpster. Maybe a raccoon, she thought. It sounded bigger than a raccoon. She rolled up the window quickly, put Wynonna Judd on the Discman, and smoked. She kept checking her watch.

Because she had the music on, Monique didn’t hear the car coming. It raced past with its headlights off, and scared the bejeezus out of her. Right behind it came two more cars, whoosh, whoosh, no lights. It was black as coal outside, but she thought she saw bubble-gum machines on top. She immediately killed the stereo and slumped down in the seat. The night swallowed the sounds of the car engines, and it became as quiet as the inside of a coffin. She chewed off most of her fingernails. The phone didn’t beep. She waited an hour, and then some. When she couldn’t stand it anymore she started the car up and backed out onto the roadway. She thought for a moment about going straight back to New Orleans, but she couldn’t just desert Darryl, so she turned to the right. She kept her lights off, too. Nobody was coming, and the road went straight as a bullet. After driving five minutes she reached the T and stopped to look around. Way down the gravel road she could see lights, flashing blue ones and one steady bright white one, like she had seen on a movie set once on Canal Street. They might have been a couple of miles away, but you didn’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on.

Monique jammed the shifter into the slot marked “R” and peeled out backwards. She pointed the Mazda due north and mashed the gas pedal down flat.

She got back home in a lot less time than the trip out had taken. After riding around her block, looking for things suspicious, she parked the car and ran into her apartment carrying the blue bag, which she pushed under her bed. Then she sat in front of the TV, rocking back and forth with her arms tight around her knees. There was no one she could call.

Monique woke up at around noon on Monday, got dressed, and went over to the restaurant. The bartender, a guy named Larry, filled her in on the news. Darryl had been busted down in the bayou. Larry didn’t know too many details yet, but it had made the radio. She tried to act as though she was extremely shocked. She made a scene about being upset, then drove back to her apartment in the Mazda and waited. She was preparing to go to work at four o’clock when the phone finally rang.

“Hey, babe,” he said. He sounded really tired.

“Hi, honey. Where are you?”

“In jail. The good officer here is letting me make a phone call.”

“Are you all right?”

“Oh yeah,” he sighed. “I’m fine. Here’s what I need you to do. I want you to go to the safe in the office and take out fifteen thousand dollars. There should be that much there. Give it to Jimmy. It’s for my bail. He’ll know what to do. He ought to have me home by tomorrow.”

She liked the way he said “home.”

“Have you got my car in a safe place?” he asked.

“Yeah. It’s parked right outside. Everything is okay.”

“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll be here,” she told him.

* * *

Darryl was naturally bummed out about his bust, but Monique sensed that he was also trying to figure something out. She could tell the pieces weren’t fitting right. He was back at work at Champs, but he was very distracted. All of the employees told him how sorry they were, and he told them to forget about it. Everything would work out. The bar still did good business, the same as always, but the guys in suits, the ones Darryl always called “the players,” disappeared completely. The phone in the office stopped ringing.

Darryl started drinking a little bit more.

“When this is all over, let’s take a trip,” Monique suggested.

“Where would you like to go?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Canada, maybe.”

“What’s in Canada?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t it be fun to go someplace really different? I’d like to see the Yukon, and the Mounties with the red coats.”

“It’s really cold up there.”

“I don’t think it would be too cold in the summertime. They have to be able to pan for gold, like you see in the movies, so you know the water can’t be frozen all the time. Have you ever been?”

“No,” Darryl said.

“Well, I’d like to go.”

“Suits me,” he said. “We can celebrate me getting out of prison.”

“You’re not going to have to go to prison, are you?”

“Being realistic, Monique, it’s a possibility.”

“Were you in before?”

“When I got busted?”

“Yes.”

“Just for a couple of months. It was one of their so-called nice places, up near Monroe.”

“Was it real hard for you?”

“No, just boring. You see some shitty things happen inside, though. You got to stay on your toes to keep out of trouble. You hear as little as possible, you know what I mean. I guess it’s hard to imagine if you’ve never been there.”

It was an opening, but Monique didn’t take it. They were at Darryl’s apartment, and Monique tried to comfort him with hugs and kisses. He was so listless that it took some time to get his motor running. Trying in the only way she knew to make things up to him, she told him to lie back and forget his troubles. She slipped off her dress and knelt over him, gently trailing her hair over his face and chest, letting his hands roam over her body until he was aroused.

Lying in his big bed afterward, sharing a cigarette, Darryl started up again. “Did you ever wonder what it feels like to be on the moon?” he asked.

She asked him what he meant.

“Just circling around in orbit. No communication. Lost in space, but under the control of something bigger than you. You can’t get away from it, and you can’t get any closer to it.”

She didn’t know how to respond, so she said, “Yeah, I kind of know what you mean.”

“It’s really weird,” was all the comment Darryl would make. She squeezed his shoulder to encourage him, but he was finished.

Still, he seemed to have it under control. He would tell jokes and make the customers laugh.

He came over to Monique’s apartment and got the blue bag about a week after his arrest. First he opened it up and gave her $50,000 in cash. That was for her to hold on to, he said. It was money to take care of herself with, hire lawyers, or whatever she might need or he might want.

The sight of all that cash really upset her. She grabbed Darryl with both hands and tried to shake him, though he was too big to shake.

“I need to know what we’re into here,” she shouted in his face. She wasn’t thinking when she said “we,” but Darryl picked up on it. He looked at her funny and sat on the bed. He took her hand.

“It really was stupid for me to get you involved,” he said. He fumbled around for a cigarette, as usual.

“I don’t care about that. I just want to know what’s really going on.” She took one of his hands in both of hers.

He ran his fingers through his thick black hair. “I’m not sure what I can tell you, babe. Something definitely went wrong. I was supposed to be protected. It was arranged for the Terrebonne Parish deputies to be somewhere else. I’ve done this before, and there’s never been a problem. But all of a sudden the place is full of federal men, I don’t know how they found out about it, but it was just them at first.